Apparently Apple is not the only major
OEM to have some serious quality
control issues/BIOS
issues. Dell is facing what is being dubbed as
"throttlegate" -- what boils down to a mess up performance
problems on its popular E6400, E6500, and XPS laptops. And to
make matters worse for itself, Dell has begun to censor user posts --
a technique that seldom works on the internet world of vocal opinions
and cached pages.

What appears to be happening on the select
Dell models is that when the processor warms up slightly, a
throttling mechanism kicks in, cutting the CPU performance by 95
percent or more. Any running applications are thus slowed to a
crawl -- the computer acts as if it is frozen. The CPU slowly
kicks back in, but even after regaining its composure slightly, only
reaches about 50 percent of the initial clock speed.

Dell's
users have been complaining about the problems on the company's
support forums. In what appears to be a desperate attempt to
save face, the company has begun banning troublesome complainers and
deleting their posts. One prolific user that has been banned,
"Tinkerdude", has actually release an extensive 59-page
analysis of the problems dubbed "Performance loss during normal
operation in a Dell Latitude E6500 laptop due to processor and bus
clock throttling". That document can be found
here (PDF).

The issues affecting the Studio XPS 1645
appear to be similar, but less debilitating. Its issues seem to
center around an inadequate AC adapter, according to a forum
thread. While Dell hasn't respond to the E6400/E6500
problems, it is shipping beefier replacement adapters to XPS owners
who call and complain.

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